


Barynya

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dancing, Extreme (Inter)Personal Awkwardness, F/F, Labor Organizing, Nursing, Queer Friendship, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Outside Lizerne, Belgium: May 1917"So there you were," Yves said, apropos of nothing; and Hazel's upper lip broke out in a sweat. "At the canteen dance."





	Barynya

**Author's Note:**

> The folks over at [femslashficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "Mess me up, yeah, but no one does it better."

"So there you were," Yves said, apropos of nothing, and Hazel's upper lip broke out in a sweat. "At the canteen dance."

"Hm?" she said. 

"Hm?" he echoed. "Hmmm?" pursing his lips like she did, clasping his fingers together in front of his chest, "Hmmmm?" twisting them like Hazel did when her hands weren't occupied. 

"Stop it," she said, laughing.

"Hmmmmmm?" he said, eyes wide. She pressed her lips together but her hands shook on the bottle. 

"Stop," she said again, "all right, I'll spill this everywhere if you make me laugh." 

Yves subsided. She took a deep breath, careful—100 grams sodium carbonate; 80 grams sodium bicarbonate—then moved on to the next flask, half-filled with water and waiting. Yves stepped in behind her to agitate the mixture until the solids dissolved. 

"Nothing happened," Hazel told him. "I didn't even mean to go, I just—"

"You just heard Louise would be there, so of course you trotted right along."

"I—"

"Spare me, Haze," he said, "I remember you with Geneviève, all right," and then, looking up, something in her face must have struck him because "Hazel," he said, "what—"

"I just—hate this," Hazel said. The harsh thunk of the sodium bicarbonate bottle on the table because she suddenly simply—had to put it down. To press hands hard to the wood. To close her eyes. "I hate _feeling_ like this, I hate—"

"You're infatuated," Yves said, pouring the mixed sodium into the waiting lime solution. "It's no reason to castigate yourself. Unless that's what you like, of course, although from where I sit—"

"But I can't—the _me_ I am isn't me, I can't. I can't just sit and talk with you, like I _love_ to, about—the dissolution of the Montréal local, or the collapse of the Brusilov Offensive, you know, things I wouldn't be here if I didn't _passionately_ —and I certainly can't talk with _her_ about them and—"

"Hm," said Yves. "Have you tried?"

"I'm not saying Louise couldn't hold a brilliant conversation about the collapse of the Brusilov Offensive," she said, groaning. "Her father probably sent her to the States. She probably studied Political Philosophy at bloody Radcliffe."

"Well. She'd be further out of his sight there, so yes, possibly."

Hazel breathed. Yves was standing with the empty flask in his hands, which meant she was—wasting time. Eyes open, hands steady, she measured out the sodium bicarbonate, then moved on to the third flask. 

"It's my own way of being I hate," she said. "When I'm with her. Or with Geneviève, for the longest time, or with—whereas you. I wouldn't mind if I could be like you were, with Näel." 

"Ah yes," Yves said, "A passion for the ages. Which is why he's in—I don't know, France, probably, as you may have noticed we don't write to each other, getting slaughtered with the rest of the 114th, while I'm decanting Dakin's fluid in a tent in fucking Belgium." He dumped the sodium into the lime. "It's very romantic, and highly intellectually stimulating."

Hazel sighed. It all seemed idiotic, put like that. She finished measuring the sodium into the final flask, then set the bottles down. Capped them. Turned to the clock on the first batch they'd mixed: four minutes. At her back, she could hear Yves agitating the final sodium mixture. 

"I went to the canteen dance," she said, steady. "You were on rounds. Louise was dancing with all the boys, she's. She's a lovely dancer. One-step, mostly, which I don't—. Anyway Kosmos and Alex arrived as I did, so at least I had an excuse to stand about chatting. Practice so I don't start mixing up the dative and the accusative, you know."

"A danger of which I live in constant fear."

"And then Paul, who was manning the record player, saw Kosmos and yelled out that he'd something for him. And he put on the 'Slavic Woman's Farewell' and said, you know, to the room: everyone watch Kosmos. And Kosmos—I'd told him about, during my time in Petrograd, going with a friend—"

"Lidiya," said Yves, and then, his voice octave-climbing in delight: "Bar—you and Kosmos danced the _Barynya_ to the 'Slavic Woman's Farewell'? At the canteen dance?"

"You're kicking yourself to have missed it," Hazel said, smiling a little; and "My darling girl," Yves said, "you have _no_ idea." 

The clock ticked over. Hazel prepared the siphon and the little paper filter; Yves, still chuckling, hooked it to the brown glass bottle and began to pump the little bulb.

"Anyway," Hazel said. "Louise caught me up, afterward. Outside the canteen."

"As well she might!" said Yves, through his continued laughter, and Hazel couldn't stand it, she couldn't keep herself _together_ by herself; all her rigid borders; how cold it was; and she let herself just sag against him, hugging him to her, face pressed to his warm chest. 

His arm came up around her shoulders, even as he kept siphoning with his other hand.

"Oh Hazel," Yves sighed. Rubbing her back. She wasn't crying. But she felt—porous, anyway. Improperly assembled. Yves kissed the very top of her head, through her nurse's cap. 

"She said she hadn't expected I'd be such a good dancer," Hazel said. "She asked me to teach her."

"What did you say?" 

"I mumbled something mortifying about—when we'd have time for such a thing, and anyway it was nothing to what she could do already, and—oh I don't know. Eventually I think I got around to a yes."

He didn't reply. She pressed her forehead into his chest, feeling absurd for. For everything about herself, really, when Näel and—and all the boys in the field hospital; and at home where unemployment kept climbing they were saying immigrants on the rolls should be locked up in camps, and denied aid. 

She squeezed him once. He squeezed back; and then she straightened up, and started the siphon on the second flask.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to the "[Slavic Woman's Farewell](https://open.spotify.com/album/6zAUbM0UC3HvNVGMYoZqxX)" (1912)! Watch [Barynya](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZcg757M14) dancing! Read this [fascinating blog post](https://adoseofhistory.com/tag/wwi-antiseptics/) about the WWI Carrel-Dakin method for irrigating gaping wounds! Have a hot night on the town!


End file.
